


you will still be here tomorrow

by grayintogreen



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, yondu doesn't take rocket's crap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24783724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayintogreen/pseuds/grayintogreen
Summary: “Lookie here. You’re all piss and vinegar ‘til somebody gets you by the tail, rat. Then you’re jus’ another animal.”Rocket attempts to antagonize his cellmate. Unfortunately for him, Yondu knows this trick. (Missing scene from GotG Vol. 2)
Kudos: 17





	you will still be here tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this sometime after Vol 2 came out in theaters, which tells you how long it's been sitting in my folders. Finally decided to dust it off and finish it up.

By the third time Groot left and Rocket had stopped laughing about the eye, the silence started to overwhelm and the seconds ticked by slowly, as they waited for the little twig to return with the right item this time. Hopefully. Rocket only had so much faith in Groot- he’d get it, eventually, but it was going to take longer than he’d like.

In the meantime, silence was very loud to sensitive ears- when things were noisy, you couldn’t pick apart anything specific, so you could tune it all out. When it got quiet, you got to sort all the little noises both outside and inside your head until you couldn’t tell them apart, and went mad because of it. He knew this because he spent a lot of long, quiet nights in a cage. And inevitably, quiet always took him back there.

So he went to his old standby- provoke outrage. “So Kree battle slave, huh?”

The tension in Yondu’s demeanor suggested a threat display, and Rocket was far beyond the point of being afraid of him, so it didn’t bother him one bit. “Now ain’t the time.”

A nonchalant shrug- they might as well be talking about the weather. Rocket had always been better at calling other people on their shit than having his shit called. “You started it. You can’t just dump your damage on a guy and expect him not to say something about it later.”

The logic didn’t ease the tension any, but after a second, Yondu spat on the ground behind him and gave Rocket his attention, “Kree like to start wars, but they don’t always like t’ fight in ‘em. They buy kids from disreputables. One of the reasons Stakar and the other captains don’t deal in that particular business- ‘cause of people like that.”

Rocket picked up on the irony and didn’t have the good sense or the decency to keep it to himself. “Seems like you’re the last person who’d break the code for that. You got some unresolved issues or somet-”

Yondu might have been weaponless, but that didn’t make him any less a Ravager, which Rocket was quick to find out when the old man snatched him by the tail and yanked him back so hard, his chin hit the cold floor and instinct kicked in as he tried to flail-kick himself free, a snarl escaping him. It was even worse when Yondu laughed, holding firm and keeping him from moving too much to get any good retaliation in.

“Lookie here. You’re all piss and vinegar ‘til somebody gets you by the tail, rat. Then you’re jus’ another animal.” Rocket sputtered an angry series of words that he never would have said if Groot were here. “Sounds like I ain’t the only one with unresolved issues.”

The cold fury in Rocket’s eyes refused to die out and he stared down the old Ravager like he was promising to rip that smug, nasty-ass smile right off his face once he could. Yondu could read that look clear as day and it made no difference. He’d brought fighty young boys into the Ravager fold before and all of them thought they knew better than the Captain. “Now you listen here, boy. I’m gonna let you go in a tic, and you ain’t gonna do squat or else you’re gonna be gettin’ outta here with a broke arm, you get me?”

Rocket’s teeth remained bared, and he said nothing to either confirm or deny the order. Yondu must have expected that, because he went on anyway. “You don’t get to talk to me about why I do what I do, unless you’re willin’ to talk about why you almost took Halfnut’s arm off when he grabbed you by the scruff of your neck to put you in that damn chair.”

The fight went out of Rocket’s eyes then and he looked almost ashamed of himself, and only then did Yondu let go of his tail. In the second after, Rocket retreated to the other side of the grating and began to run his hands over the fur to get it back into place. “You jackass. You were watchin’ the whole time.”

“Hard not to with all that hissin’ and spittin’ you did when you woke up.” Yondu’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a predatory grin. “No wonder you gave Taserface such a hard time. You wanted everyone to think you were a real badass after that.”

Rocket continued to run his hands through his tail fur with hunched shoulders and a scowl on his face. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Guess it did.” This time it was Yondu’s turn to shrug as he turned to squint out into the hall to see if Groot was coming back yet. “I really thought I was doin’ those kids a big favor. Seemed like a way to get paid while bein’ altruistic, but that was just how I justified it t’ sleep better at night. Bet you’ll be doin’ the same damn thing about those batteries you stole, too.”

Knowing that Yondu wasn’t looking at him, he felt safe enough to flinch without fear of being called on it. The truth is he had already rationalized it. He wasn’t used to anyone exposing him quite like this. “I wish everybody would get off my ass about those damn batteries.”

A chuckle from the old man made Rocket tense even more. This was so much better when he was the one being the asshole- having it turned around on him was unfair. “I got sold so young I never got to learn how to work an arrow like a right proper Centurian. Had that thing put in my head so I could bypass havin’ to go back and learn. It ain’t the natural way, but t’ hell with it.

Something told Rocket Yondu was building up to something and that made him even more apprehensive about the imbalance that had shifted this conversation away from his favor. “Point is, that was my choice. I’m bettin’ them little metal bits on your chest there ain’t for show, and I’m bettin’ you didn’t ask somebody for ‘em neither.”

Rocket stayed silent, and Yondu went on. “And thinkin’ that, I can see why somebody yankin’ you up by your scruff might make you mad.” He tore his eyes away from the empty hall to scrutinize the surly little creature across from him. “See, rat, you don’t have t’ tell me shit. I can tell jus’ by lookin’ at you.”

Rocket snarled, fur bristling. Aside from when he _was_ exactly that, he’d never felt more like a trapped animal than he did in this cell with a man who could lay him bare with just words. “What d’you wanna hear, you blue idiot? That I’m a freak cobbled together from spare parts?”

“Mm.” Yondu grunted, sticking a thumb against his bottom teeth to check on a loose molar from when Taserface punched him. All of this was calculated, of course, and Rocket knew it. He was giving him a taste of his own medicine and doing it as brutally as he could. “Guess it’s a start.”

And then came the silence again, which was the worst trap Yondu could have laid out for him, and he could see the tactical advantages of what happened next were all skewed in Yondu’s favor. Change the subject? Get ignored. Stay silent? End up in the same situation that started this mess, only with a lot more he didn’t want to think about and nothing to distract him. Start talking? Open old wounds.

All options seemed painful and none seemed enticing, and after awhile Rocket sighed dramatically and began to pick at the brackets embedded into his chest. The fur grew around them and made them seem like seamless additions, so much that Rocket couldn’t remember a time without them. “They hold some of the cybernetics in place. I got a big chunk that go from here to here.” He indicated his shoulders. “They had to reshape my bone structure, so there’s a lot of shit like that, but you can’t see most of it.”

Yondu grunted in a noncommittal manner. “The hell were they tryin’ to make?” When his question was met with a warning growl, he laughed. “Ease up, boy. I’m just thinkin’ that most scientists have got a goal in mind, don’t they?”

“Not on Half-World they don’t.” Rocket’s growl hadn’t left his voice and his teeth were still bared as if he was waiting for Yondu to get distracted so he could go for the throat- to hell with his plan and to hell with his stupid fin. It didn’t matter that Rocket started it- he wasn’t used to people fighting back like this. “They were just screwin’ around.”

“People do that sometimes. Screw around with somethin’ weaker than they are.” He gave Rocket a smirk that was vicious enough to bite and Rocket’s ears flattened. 

“I’m not weak, all right?”

“Oh no, not you,” Yondu’s voice took on a note of condescension. “When you’re helpless, you just pick fights with anyone you can, even if it’ll get you killed, ‘cause you wanna be a hardass. That ain’t weak. That’s jus’ stupid.”

Rocket was convinced that his teeth were just going to permanently stay bared forever now. Every time he thought he could put his hackles down, Yondu got them right back up again, and the old man was delighted by it. “I’m not _stupid_.”

“Mmhmm.” Yondu seemed to be mulling something over, and Rocket waited for another tear at his pride, but it didn't come. His ears flattened to his head and a low growl reverberated from his throat as he grew more agitated by his imagination getting away with him. What sort of things was Yondu thinking right now? Was he pitying him? Was he thinking he was some stupid creature? What?

He hadn't realized he'd said "What?" out loud until Yondu looked up abruptly and the sound of the barked word echoed back, courtesy of the ship's acoustics. _Good_ acoustics, actually. He made a note of that, in case it might be useful, but remained focused on his seething rage.

Yondu, the asshole, just chuckled. "I was jus' thinkin' that's a bad way t' go about livin' your life if you're expectin' to see tomorrow. But maybe you ain't."

Rocket stiffened as the words hit him and he might have had something to say to that- something defensive, something deflective, something- anything- so he didn't have to think about that or the implications therein too much. He might have come up with something, surely, but he didn't have to, because he caught the faint metallic whiff of fresh blood and the sap-sweet scent of a young tree accompanied by the familiar tapping of Groot's stems on the metal floor of the ship.

"Why is there _blood_?" He asked, out of context. Yondu had to pick out what he meant just by watching how he sniffed at the air, and got closer to the grating as if he could smell it out, himself. The answer presented itself when Groot arrived with a severed human toe, deeply proud of himself for his find.

And when Rocket said he didn't want to think about or discuss any of that _ever again_ , he meant the fucking toe _and_ Yondu's impeccable ability to cut him right to the core of his being. 

Before this night concluded, he'd only get one of those wishes.


End file.
